The Reign of Terror | World History Project Jun 1793 to Jul 1794 The Reign of Terror The Reign of Terror (June, 1793 – July 27, 1794), also known as the The Terror (French: la Terreur) was a period of violence that occurred for one year and two months after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the revolution." Estimates vary widely as to how many were killed, with numbers ranging from 16,000 to 40,000; in many cases, records were not kept, or if they were, they are considered likely to be inaccurate. The guillotine ("National Razor") became the symbol of a string of executions: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, the Girondins, Louis Philippe II and Madame Roland, as well as many others, such as "the father of modern chemistry" Antoine Lavoisier, lost their lives under its blade. During 1794, revolutionary France was beset with real or imagined conspiracies by internal and foreign enemies.

Within France the revolution was opposed by the French nobility, which had lost its inherited privileges. The Roman Catholic Church was generally against the Revolution, which had turned the clergy into employees of the state and required they take an oath of loyalty to the nation (through the Civil Constitution of the Clergy). In addition, the First French Republic was engaged in a series of French Revolutionary Wars with neighboring powers. The extension of civil war and the advance of foreign armies on national territory produced a political crisis, and increased the rivalry between the Girondins and the more radical Jacobins; the latter were eventually grouped in the parliamentary faction called the Mountain, and had the support of the Parisian population. The French government established the Committee of Public Safety, which took its final form on 6 September 1793 and was ultimately dominated by Maximilien Robespierre, in order to suppress internal counter-revolutionary activities and raise additional French military force. Through the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Terror's leaders exercised broad dictatorial powers and used them to instigate mass executions and political purges.

The repression accelerated in June and July 1794, a period called "la Grande Terreur" (The Great Terror), and ended in the coup of 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794), the so-called "Thermidorian Reaction", in which several leaders of the Reign of Terror were executed, including Saint-Just and Robespierre. Source: Wikipedia Added by: Jabril Faraj Related Topics Reign Of Terror during French Revolution - Historum - History Forums Reign Of Terror during French Revolution User Name Need help with the website? Contact Us anytime. European History European History Forum - Western and Eastern Europe including the British Isles, Scandinavia, Russia Page 1 of 4 Posts: 3,524 Reign Of Terror during French Revolution The Reign of Terror (5 September 1793 ï¿½ 28 July 1794),[1] also known simply as The Terror (French: la Terreur), was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the revolution".

The death toll ranged in the tens of thousands, with 16,594 executed by guillotine (2,639 in Paris),[2] and another 25,000 in summary executions across France.[3] [ame= of Terror - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] It was started by Robespierre when France was in total anarchy, massive price rise, enemy troops's advancement, French public refused to join Army as well as wide spread Conspiracy against new French Government. It resulted in over 25,000 deaths. So do you think it was necessary or not? From: French Republic Posts: 1,702 Our New first Republic find order and Autority . IN 1793 our France have numerous Ennemis outside and inside ( Royalists, Federalists, Anti Republican etc)Is not terror but "Law of suspects" Following the introduction of Terror September 5, the Montagnards implement a system to stop the maximum against counter revolutionaries. The law allows them to make more expeditious litigation and expand the categories of crimes against revolutionaries.

Are so called "suspect", "those who by their conduct, their relationships, their words or writings have shown themselves partisans of tyranny, federalism and enemies of freedom, those who can not justify their livelihoods and the performance of their civic duties and those who have been granted a certificate of citizenship, the former nobles who have not consistently demonstrated their commitment to the Revolution, the immigrants, even if they are returned, the accused of crimes, even paid (...). "The application of this interpretation will end after the fall of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794) and our noble republic introduced the Universal suffrage to alas never applied in reality but the principle is there. Reign of Terror - YouTube Reign of Terror Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.

Published on Aug 4, 2014 The Reign of Terror (5 September 1793 – 28 July 1794), also known simply as The Terror (French: la Terreur), was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the revolution". The death toll ranged in the tens of thousands, with 16,594 executed by guillotine (2,639 in Paris), and another 25,000 in summary executions across France. The guillotine (called the "National Razor") became the symbol of the revolutionary cause, strengthened by a string of executions: King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, the Girondins, Philippe Égalité (Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans), and Madame Roland, and others such as pioneering chemist Antoine Lavoisier, lost their lives under its blade. During 1794, revolutionary France was beset with conspiracies by internal and foreign enemies.

Within France, the revolution was opposed by the French nobility, which had lost its inherited privileges. The reactionary Roman Catholic Church did everything to discredit the Revolution, which had turned the clergy into employees of the state and required they take an oath of loyalty to the nation (through the Civil Constitution of the Clergy). In addition, the First French Republic was engaged in a series of wars with neighboring powers intent on crushing the revolution to prevent its spread. This video is targeted to blind users. Attribution: Article text available under CC-BY-SA Creative Commons image source in video Category "Tweedland" The Gentlemen's club: Terror! Robespierre and the French Revolution Friday, 29 August 2014 Terror! Robespierre and the French Revolution The Reign of Terror (5 September 1793 – 28 July 1794), also known simply as The Terror (French: la Terreur), was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the revolution".

The death toll ranged in the tens of thousands, with 16,594 executed by guillotine ( 2,639 in France . The guillotine (called the "National Razor") became the symbol of the revolutionary cause, strengthened by a string of executions: King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, the Girondins, Philippe Égalité (Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans), and Madame Roland, and others such as pioneering chemist Antoine Lavoisier, lost their lives under its blade. During 1794, revolutionary France was beset with conspiracies by internal and foreign enemies. Within France , the revolution was opposed by the French nobility, which had lost its inherited privileges. The reactionary Roman Catholic Church did everything to discredit the Revolution, which had turned the clergy into employees of the state and required they take an oath of loyalty to the nation (through the Civil Constitution of the Clergy). In addition, the First French Republic was engaged in a series of wars with neighboring powers intent on crushing the revolution to prevent its spread.

The extension of civil war and the advance of foreign armies on national territory produced a political crisis and increased the rivalry between the Girondins and the more radical Jacobins. The latter were eventually grouped in the parliamentary faction called the Mountain, and they had the support of the Parisian population. The French government established the Committee of Public Safety, which took its final form on 6 September 1793 in order to suppress internal counter-revolutionary activities and raise additional French military forces. Through the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Terror's leaders exercised broad powers and used them to eliminate the internal and external enemies of the Republic. The repression accelerated in June and July 1794, a period called la Grande Terreur (the Great Terror), and ended in the coup of 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794), leading to the Thermidorian Reaction, in which several instigators of the Reign of Terror were executed, including Saint-Just and Robespierre.

After the resolution of the foreign wars during 1791–93, the violence associated with the Reign of Terror increased significantly: only roughly 4 percent of executions had occurred before November 1793 (Brumaire, Year I), thus signalling to many that the Reign of Terror might have had additional causes. These could have included inherent issues with revolutionary ideology, and/or the need of a weapon for political repression in a time of significant foreign and civil upheaval,leading to many different interpretations by historians. Many historians have debated the reasons why the French Revolution took such a radical turn during the Reign of Terror of 1793–94. The public was frustrated that the social equality and anti-poverty measures that the Revolution originally promised were not materializing. Jacques Roux's Manifesto of the Enraged in 25 June 1793 describes the extent to which, four years into the Revolution, these goals were largely unattained by the common people. The foundation of the Terror is centered on the April 1793 creation of the Committee of Public Safety and its militant Jacobin delegates.

The National Convention believed that the Committee needed to rule with "near dictatorial power" and the Committee was delegated new and expansive political powers to quickly respond to popular demands. Those in power believed the Committee of Public Safety was an unfortunate, but necessary and temporary reaction to the pressures of foreign and civil war. Historian Albert Mathiez argues that the authority of the Committee of Public Safety was based on the necessities of war, as those in power realized that deviating from the will of the people was a temporary emergency response measure in order to secure the ideals of the Republic. According to Mathiez, they "touched only with trepidation and reluctance the regime established by the Constituent Assembly" so as not to interfere with the early accomplishments of the Revolution. Similar to Mathiez, Richard Cobb introduced competing circumstances of revolt and re-education within France as an explanation for the Terror.

Counter-revolutionary rebellions taking place in Lyon, Brittany, Vendée, Nantes, and Marseille were threatening the Revolution with royalist ideas.[ Cobb writes, "the revolutionaries themselves, living as if in combat… were easily persuaded that only terror and repressive force saved them from the blows of their enemies." Terror was used in these rebellions both to execute inciters and to provide a very visible example to those who might be considering rebellion. Cobb agrees with Mathiez that the Terror was simply a response to circumstances, a necessary evil and natural defence, rather than a manifestation of violent temperaments or excessive fervour. At the same time, Cobb rejects Mathiez's Marxist interpretation that elites controlled the Reign of Terror to the significant benefit to the bourgeoisie. Instead, Cobb argues that "social struggles" between the classes were seldom the reason for revolutionary actions and sentiments. Francois Furet, however, argues that circumstances could not have been the sole cause of the Reign of Terror because "the risks for the Revolution were greatest" in the middle of 1793 but at that time "the activity of the Revolutionary Tribunal was relatively minimal."Widespread terror and a consequent rise in executions came after external and internal threats were vastly reduced.

Therefore Furet suggests that ideology played the crucial role in the rise of the Reign of Terror because "man's regeneration" became a central theme for the Committee of Public Safety as they were trying to instill ideals of free will and enlightened government in the public. As this ideology became more and more pervasive, violence became a significant method for dealing with counter-revolutionaries and the opposition because, for fear of being labelled a counter-revolutionary themselves, "the moderate men would have to accept, endorse and even glorify the acts of the more violent." On 2 June 1793, Paris sections – encouraged by the enragés Jacques Roux and Jacques Hébert – took over the Convention, calling for administrative and political purges, a low fixed price for bread, and a limitation of the electoral franchise to sans-culottes alone. With the backing of the National Guard, they persuaded the Convention to arrest 29 Girondist leaders, including Jacques Pierre Brissot.[17] On 13 July the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat – a Jacobin leader and journalist known for his violent rhetoric – by Charlotte Corday resulted in a further increase in Jacobin political influence.

Maximilien Robespierre had others executed via his role on the Revolutionary Tribunal and the Committee of Public Safety Georges Danton, the leader of the August 1792 uprising against the King, was removed from the Committee. On 27 July Maximilien Robespierre, known in Republican circles as "the Incorruptible" for his ascetic dedication to his ideals, made his entrance, quickly becoming the most influential member of the Committee as it moved to take radical measures against the Revolution's domestic and foreign enemies. The result of this was policy through which the state used violent repression to crush resistance to the government. Under control of the effectively dictatorial Committee, the Convention quickly enacted more legislation. On 9 September the Convention established sans-culottes paramilitary forces, the revolutionary armies, to force farmers to surrender grain demanded by the government. On 17 September the Law of Suspects was passed, which authorized the charging of counter-revolutionaries with vaguely defined crimes against liberty. On 29 September the Convention extended price-fixing from grain and bread to other essential goods, and also fixed wages.

The guillotine became the symbol of a string of executions: Louis XVI had already been guillotined before the start of the terror; Marie-Antoinette, the Girondists, Philippe Égalité, Madame Roland and many others lost their lives under its blade. The Revolutionary Tribunal summarily condemned thousands of people to death by the guillotine, while mobs beat other victims to death. Sometimes people died for their political opinions or actions, but many for little reason beyond mere suspicion, or because some others had a stake in getting rid of them. Among people who were condemned by the revolutionary tribunals, about 8 percent were aristocrats, 6 percent clergy, 14 percent middle class, and 72 percent were workers or peasants accused of hoarding, evading the draft, desertion, rebellion.[21] Maximilien Robespierre, "frustrated with the progress of the revolution," saw politics in a rather tyrannical way because "any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil." Another anti-clerical uprising was made possible by the instalment of the Revolutionary Calendar on 24 October.

Hébert's and Chaumette's atheist movement initiated an anti-religious campaign in order to dechristianise society. The program of dechristianisation waged against Catholicism, and eventually against all forms of Christianity, included the deportation or execution of clergy; the closing of churches; the rise of cults and the institution of a civic religion; the large scale destruction of religious monuments; the outlawing of public and private worship and religious education; the forced abjurement of priests of their vows and forced marriages of the clergy; the word "saint" being removed from street names; and the War in the Vendée. The enactment of a law on 21 October 1793 made all suspected priests and all persons who harboured them liable to death on sight.[24] The climax was reached with the celebration of the goddess Reason in Notre Dame Cathedral on 10 November. Because dissent was now regarded as counter-revolutionary, extremist enragés such as Hébert and moderate Montagnard indulgents such as Danton were guillotined in the Spring of 1794.

On 7 June Robespierre, who favoured deism over Hébert's atheism and had previously condemned the Cult of Reason, recommended that the Convention acknowledge the existence of his god. On the next day, the worship of the deistic Supreme Being was inaugurated as an official aspect of the Revolution. Compared with Hébert's somewhat popular festivals, this austere new religion of Virtue was received with signs of hostility by the Parisian public. Fatal Purity By Marisa Linton | Published in History Today 2006 / Marisa Linton examines a work on one of the main characters in the French Revolution. Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution Ruth Scurr Chatto and Windus 369 pp £20 ISBN 0701176008 The two leading figures of the French Revolution who remain best known today are at opposite ends of the spectrum, Marie Antoinette and Robespierre. Robespierre’s character is by far the more complex and compelling. Marie-Antoinette found herself at the centre of the Revolution only through the chance that made her an empress’s daughter and a king’s wife.

Fate had destined Robespierre for obscurity and a respectable life as a small-town lawyer. However, once the Revolution broke out, he threw himself into it wholeheartedly and forged himself a unique place at its very heart. He became synonymous with all that was best about the Revolution: he was a tireless defender of liberty, equality and the rights of the poor and dispossessed. But he is also indelibly associated with the most hideous aspect of the Revolution: the use of Terror. His enigmatic personality still commands our attention: to understand Robespierre is to begin to understand the Revolution. In 1789 Robespierre was a shy, unknown deputy in the Estates General, notable mostly for the awkwardness of his public speaking. He learned quickly: Mirabeau saw immediately what made Robespierre special: ‘That man will go far. He believes what he says.’ Robespierre was a politician by conviction and his ascetic personal life reflected this. Even at the height of his power he lived as a lodger in the house of a master carpenter. Politically astute, stubborn, infuriatingly convinced of his own rectitude, he was that most remarkable of mortals – an incorruptible politician.

No French revolutionary has attracted more biographies than Robespierre. Most have been either passionately for or passionately against him. He has that effect on people. His earnest sincerity commands respect; his conviction appals us. Indeed, it is the very integrity of his principles that makes his adoption of violent tactics so horrifying: a fact recognized by his two greatest English biographers, J.M. Thompson and Norman Hampson. And now we have the latest biography of Robespierre, the first book by a relatively unknown author. The publisher makes great claims for it, stating that it is: ‘The highly-anticipated debut of a major new historian’, and asserting that the book ‘sheds a dazzling new light’ on the puzzle that is Robespierre. Well, does it? Far from it. This book is not likely to be of interest to anyone with specialist knowledge of the Revolution. There is no new material, no original interpretation, no use made of the burgeoning new studies of political culture and language in this period that could throw fresh light upon the subject. But that should not trouble the general reader. The story of Robespierre is itself an extraordinary one. And Scurr does a very competent job, giving her account in a clear and evocative style.

At times, particularly as the narrative reaches its climax, her language approaches the almost poetic quality this tale can inspire in even the most prosaic historians. Political biographies, however, straddle an awkward position between addressing the role of the individual, and the events that shaped the time. The most notable shortcoming of this book is the downplaying of the politics of the Revolution itself. Thompson said it was misleading to think of the Revolution as having leaders at all, for they were ‘swept off their feet, and carried along by a movement which they were powerless to control.’ This does not always come across in Scurr’s account. She attributes much of the hostility between the two revolutionary groups, the Jacobins and the Girondins, to the personal enmity of their respective leaders, Robespierre and Brissot. She states: ‘Robespierre had made an implicit pact with street violence in order to destroy his Girondin enemies in the Convention.’ This is misleading: personal rancour there was in plenty, but that was not why the Girondins were overthrown.

The overwhelming reasons were the war and war policy, the fate of the King, and the question of how far the Parisian lower classes, the sans-culottes, the practitioners of street violence, should control the Revolution. Eventually, the sans-culottes took matters into their own hands to put the Jacobins in power. Robespierre and the Jacobins chose to ride the tiger of direct popular democracy in allying themselves with the sans-culottes. But to ride a tiger is a dangerous business and the Jacobin leaders wielded the Terror partly to stop the sans-culottes doing it on their own account. ‘Let us be terrible,’ said Danton, ‘to save the people from being so.’ Was Robespierre the hero or the villain of the tragedy that was the Revolution? This book is a good place to begin the search for an answer. Marisa Linton is the author of The Politics of Virtue in Enlightenment France (Palgrave, 2001).

VIOLENCE MADE IT HAPPEN Date: March 19, 1989, Sunday, Late City Final Edition Section 7; Page 1, Column 3; Book Review Desk Byline: By EUGEN WEBER; Eugen Weber, a professor of history at the University CITIZENS A Chronicle of the French Revolution. By Simon Schama. Illustrated. 948 pp. New York : Alfred A. Knopf. $29.95. Recumbent readers beware. Those who like to do their poring lying down will scarcely rush to take up this book. It is monumental. Once hefted, however, and well balanced on lap, knee or chest, ''Citizens'' will prove hard to put down. Provocative and stylish, Simon Schama's account of the first few years of the great Revolution in France, and of the decades that led up to it, is thoughtful, informed and profoundly revisionist. Mr. Schama, who teaches history at Harvard University , has committed other large and readable tomes. But nowhere more than here does he challenge enduring prejudices with prejudices of his own. His arguments, though, are embedded in narrative.

Above all, he tells a story, and he tells it well. The French Revolution, according to Mr. Schama, was no bourgeois thrust against stodgy despotism or anachronistic aristocracy. The old regime was not old, nor did it act anachronistic, fusty or decrepit. Neither stagnant nor reactionary, the French nobility, at least its most audible and visible members, were more open to new blood, ideas and ventures than they had ever been. Two-thirds of noble families had become ennobled during the 17th and 18th centuries: a nobleman was no more than a successful bourgeois; and capitalist enterprise among nobles was as vigorous as among their bourgeois counterparts. Far from offering an obstacle to progress, the greatest modernizers in metallurgy, mines, shipbuilding or street lighting were nobly born. Far from rejecting the social and intellectual lessons of the Enlightenment, nobles echoed them: not least the gentleman Mr. Schama says was known in America as Marcus D. Lafayette. In their sympathy for new ideas, the Marquis de Lafayette and his equally noble friends were no exception; and the reign of Louis XVI, Mr.

Schama insists, was troubled more by addiction to change than by resistance to it. Indeed, he argues, revolutionary violence was fired more by hostility to modernization, attempted or proposed, than by the will to speed it forward. Like the elite, government was less interested in tradition than in novelty and greater efficiency. The bureaucratic personnel of the 1780's would be recalled to office by Napoleon in the late 1790's, to mend the mess the Revolution left behind. Queen Marie Antoinette was lampooned as Madame Deficit, but expenditure on all Court items, 6 or 7 percent of the total budget, was about half what the British spent on their monarchy. There were serious problems, similar to those faced by other contemporary regimes: venality of office (51,000 public offices held as private property) facilitated cash flow but blocked reform; tax exemptions at the top encouraged tax evasion at the bottom. But the root of the fiscal problems was the cost of armaments, coupled with resistance to new taxes. By 1788, debt service accounted for almost half of current revenues. But in 18th-century perspective, even this huge debt was neither exceptional nor unmanageable.

And those who sought to manage it on the King's behalf were more than empty heads presiding over empty purses. Nevertheless, aggressive, reforming managers in high office did not manage to reform; and the money crisis turned into the political crisis that led the monarchy to its end. In my view, Mr. Schama underestimates structural problems that no 18th-century regime effectively coped with. But he is right to shift blame for failure from structural dysfunctions to ''circumstances and policies'' - that is, to men and, above all, to a well-meaning but indecisive King, who was addicted to changing ministers in midstream. In Louis XVI, royal irresolution produced political incoherence. With no two ministers following the same strategy, fiscal policies especially were inconsistent and ineffective. Meanwhile, it became clear that true fiscal reforms could be achieved only with the support of representative bodies. But the re-creation of an assembly representative enough to save France from bankruptcy aggravated the crisis such an assembly was supposed to solve. Public debate swelled to unexpected heights. Didactic or preachy, it often affected the muscular patriotism learned from the classics and reinforced by recent American example.

Patriotic freedom would surely produce money, where reforming absolutism had not. And, just as had happened 20 years before in Britain 's American colonies, argument drifted from particulars to generalities, from particular privileges, policies and liberties to more general liberty. This is where circumstances altered cases. For two years before the Estates General assembled at Versailles in May 1789, harvests had been rotten, food supplies were short and opportunities to earn a living wage in an agriculture-driven economy had shrunk. With 40 percent of the kingdom's population dependent on charity, hunger bred anger, crowds turned into mobs. It was to defend liberty and its patriotic proponents embattled at Versailles that Parisian crowds rioted in July 1789; but also, and more so, they rioted for bread and against taxes. On July 12, the wall surrounding Paris was breached and its customs posts sacked and burnt. On July 14, the Bastille fell and its seven prisoners were released: four forgers, two lunatics and one aristocratic delinquent, imprisoned at his family's request.

The Bastille's governor was slaughtered; his head, hacked off with a pocketknife, was stuck on a pike and carried through streets filled with cheering crowds. That day and later, other heads were flourished in the breeze. Two, belonging to noble ''vampires'' who were blamed for the famine, had hay stuck in their mouths. Virtue militant carried a pike, and used it. Hungry, irrational, suspicious crowds easily turned from anger to murder. Real grievances were fed into a great furnace stoked by the newly emancipated press - which was less ideological than viciously vulgar, less philosophical than pornographic - and by the creative truculence of street-corner orators. Here lay the source of that relation between blood and freedom, or blood and bread, that was established not by the Terror of 1793, but by the patriotic stirrings of 1789. As Mr. Schama says, the Terror was merely 1789 with a higher body count. There would have been no Revolution, no source of revolutionary energy, without violence. It was violence, Mr.

Schama says, that ''made the Revolution revolutionary.'' He might have added: violence expanded from its normal place among ordinary people to those social groups hitherto protected from its more discomforting aspects. Nor, Mr. Schama reminds us, would revolutionary transformations have taken place without the intervention of those whom they most affected. The mass abandonment of feudal privileges on Aug. 4, 1789, was accomplished by dukes and bishops. Despite sporadic violence, the early Revolution was a bit like the hot-air balloons that trailed tricolor ribbons over the Champs-Elysees to celebrate a new Constitution. But to get that Constitution, crowds had been brought into the streets. It would be hard to drive them off when constitutional government provided less bread than absolutism had done, when patriotism delivered no provender. There is no more reason to associate food and freedom than there is to believe liberty compatible with equality. But, in Mr. Schama's words, asking for the impossible is one good definition of a revolution. A lot of impossible things were asked for in the name of reason or patriotism, liberty or equality. In 1790 the clergy were declared civil servants and asked to swear a loyalty oath to the state that paid them.

Most declined. Church property, nationalized and sold to pay state debts, did not solve the economic crisis. But by creating a cleavage between those who followed the state and those who followed the Pope, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy insured that differences over fundamental social and political reforms would spiral into a civil war that was also, as Mr. Schama calls it, a holy war. Then, in 1792, patriotism culminated in foreign wars; and the pressures of conflict, internal and external, pushed terrorism to new lengths. Because they were reminiscent of aristocratic ways, elegance, manners, wit were denounced as treason. The King was deposed, and a new calendar opened with ''Year One of French Liberty.'' In revolutionary newspeak, liberty, of course, meant its opposite: a police state, in which spying, denunciation, indictment, humiliation and death threatened all. The sententious religion of universal brotherhood gave way to the polemics of paranoia: Rousseau with a hoarse voice, as Mr. Schama puts it. Personal scores became political causes. Nuts came out of the woodwork.

Marat was one, but a nuttier enthusiast, the Marquis de Bry, gauging the mood of the hour, offered to found an organization of tyrannicides - 1,200 freedom fighters dedicated to the murder of kings, generals and assorted foes of freedom. Thus was the joy of living replaced by the joy of seeing others die. Mr. Schama is at his most powerful when denouncing the central truth of the Revolution: its dependence on organized (and disorganized) killing to attain political ends. However virtuous were the principles of the revolutionaries, he reminds us that their power depended on intimidation: the spectacle of death. Violence was no aberration, no unexpected skid off the highway of revolution: it was the Revolution - its motor and, for a while, its end. In the National Assembly Mirabeau had argued that a few must perish so that the mass of people might be saved. It turned out that more than a few would perish. Politicians who graduated from rhetoric to government found that rhetoric made government impossible. If patriotism was to triumph, politics had to end; liberty had to be suppressed in the name of Liberty ; democracy had to be sacrificed so that Democracy should live.

Speaking from the ruthless precinct of the Committee of Public Safety, Saint-Just, who is one of Mr. Schama's favorite antiheroes, insisted that the Republic stood for the extermination of everything that opposed it. And absence of enthusiastic support was opposition enough. With the likes of Saint-Just and Robespierre (a state scholarship boy, typical of old regime meritocracy), doublespeak was in the saddle. Murderously weepy, sadistically moralistic, fanatically denouncing as fanatics those who did not share their fanaticism, men like Robespierre stood for the will of the people as long as the people's will matched their own visions. Ever offering to die for their beliefs, they got the sour satisfaction of undergoing the martyrdom they professed to seek: murderers murdering murderers before being murdered in their turn, until the last days of July 1794 brought an end to the Terror, though not to continuing terrorism. This is where Mr. Schama's chronicle of the Revolution ends, before successive regimes - Directory, Consulate, Empire - tried to pick up its pieces.

But not before its author presents the bill for access to French citizenship: a quarter-century of warfare, with its fallout of militarism, nationalism and xenophobia; the disaster of the Vendee, where civil war wiped out one-third of the population; the ruin of port cities and textile towns that had been the growth areas of 18th-century France; the losses to French trade, which, by 1815, was only about 60 percent of what it had been in 1789. One could add that, by enforcing and thus discrediting paper money, the Revolution set back its popular acceptance by a century and accentuated national problems of credit and cash flow. Mr. Schama reacts against intellectual cowardice, against self-delusion, against ascribing greatness to great horrors and painting brutish acts in brilliant colors. Above all, he reacts against violence, against the way violence as means was allowed to become violence as end, against the way politicians, historians and simple-minded nincompoops rationalize violence as pathological, or sanitizing, or necessary, or whatever. Because they are forcefully expressed and buttressed by illuminating anecdotes, the selectiveness of his views is not immediately evident.

One can be so swept along by Mr. Schama's brio that his biases seem irrelevant. They are not, because they are as exaggerated as current exaggerations in the opposite direction, and because they conceal aspects of events that receive no notice. For the positive side of the Revolution, readers will have to turn elsewhere. Mr. Schama has given us a grand argument for the prosecution. Lively descriptions of major events, colorful cameos of leading characters (and obscure ones too) bring them to life here as no other general work has done. Baroque eloquence and rococo sparkle make the book long but never long-winded. All in all, it is an intelligent book for intelligent readers that is also a delight to read. THE SEAT OF THE BEAST DESPOTISM The first number of the Revolutions de Paris, published on the seventeenth of July, was devoted to a lengthy - and rather muddled - account of the insurrection. . . . ''The cells were thrown open to set free innocent victims and venerable old men who were amazed to behold the light of day.'' The reality was less dramatic. Of the seven prisoners, four were forgers who had been tried by regular process of law.

The Comte de Solanges, like de Sade, had been incarcerated at the request of his family for libertinism. . . . The remaining two prisoners were lunatics. . . . One of them, however, ''Major Whyte'' (described in French sources as English and in English sources as Irish), was perfect for revolutionary propaganda, bearing as he did a waist-length beard. With his carpet of silvery whiskers and shrunken, bony form he seemed . . . the incarnation of suffering and endurance. So Whyte was called the major de l'immensite and was borne around in triumph through the streets of Paris , amiably if weakly waving his hands in salutation, for in his bewildered condition he still assumed he was Julius Caesar. Such was the symbolic power of the Bastille to gather to itself all the miseries for which ''despotism'' was now held accountable, that reality was enhanced by Gothic fantasies. . . . Ancient pieces of armor were declared to be fiendish ''iron corsets'' applied to constrict the victim and a toothed machine that was part of a printing press was said to be a wheel of torture. Countless prints . . .

supplied suitably horrible imagery, featuring standing skeletons, instruments of torture and men in iron masks. . . . The Bastille, then, was much more important in its ''afterlife'' than it ever had been as a working institution. . . . Transfigured from a nearly empty, thinly manned anachronism into the seat of the Beast Despotism, it incorporated all those rejoicing at its capture as members of the new community of the Nation.

From ''Citizens.'' Publicada por Jeeves em 00:14 Reign of Terror Reign of Terror The Reign of Terror (July 1793 – 27 July 1794), also known as the The Terror ( French : la Terreur) was a period of violence that occurred for four years and two months after the onset of the French Revolution , incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the revolution." Estimates vary widely as to how many were killed, with numbers ranging from 16,000 to 40,000; in many cases, records were not kept, or if they were, they are considered likely to be inaccurate. The guillotine ("National Razor") became the symbol of a string of executions: Louis XVI , Marie Antoinette , the Girondins, Louis Philippe II and Madame Roland, as well as many others, such as "the father of modern chemistry" Antoine Lavoisier , lost their lives under its blade. During 1794, revolutionary France was beset with real or imagined conspiracies by internal and foreign enemies.

Within France the revolution was opposed by the French nobility, which had lost its inherited privileges. The Roman Catholic Church was generally against the Revolution, which had turned the clergy into employees of the state and required they take an oath of loyalty to the nation (through the Civil Constitution of the Clergy). In addition, the First French Republic was engaged in a series of French Revolutionary Wars with neighboring powers. The extension of civil war and the advance of foreign armies on national territory produced a political crisis, and increased the rivalry between the Girondins and the more radical Jacobins; the latter were eventually grouped in the parliamentary faction called the Mountain, and had the support of the Parisian population. The French government established the Committee of Public Safety, which took its final form on 6 September 1793 and was ultimately dominated by Maximilien Robespierre, in order to suppress internal counter-revolutionary activities and raise additional French military force. Through the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Terror's leaders exercised broad dictatorial powers and used them to instigate mass executions and political purges .

The repression accelerated in June and July 1794, a period called "la Grande Terreur" (The Great Terror), and ended in the coup of 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794), the so-called "Thermidorian Reaction", in which several leaders of the Reign of Terror were executed, including Saint-Just and Robespierre. The Terror On June 7, 1793, Paris sections — encouraged by the enragés ("enraged ones") Jacques Roux and Jacques Hébert — took over the Convention, calling for administrative and political purges, a low fixed price for bread , and a limitation of the electoral franchise to sans-culottes alone. With the backing of the National Guard , they persuaded the Convention to arrest 31 Girondin leaders, including Jacques Pierre Brissot. Following these arrests, the Jacobins gained control of the Committee of Public Safety on 10 June, installing the revolutionary dictatorship . On 13 July the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat — a Jacobin leader and journalist known for his bloodthirsty rhetoric — by Charlotte Corday , a Girondin, resulted in further increase of Jacobin political influence.

Georges Danton, the leader of the August 1792 uprising against the King, was removed from the Committee. On 27 July Maximillien Robespierre, known in Republican circles as "the Incorruptible" for his ascetic dedication to his ideals, made his entrance, quickly becoming the most influential member of the Committee as it moved to take radical measures against the Revolution's domestic and foreign enemies. Meanwhile, on 24 June the Convention adopted the first republican constitution of France, the French Constitution of 1793. It was ratified by public referendum , but never put into force; like other laws, it was indefinitely suspended by the decree of October that the government of France would be "revolutionary until the peace". On 25 December 1793 Robespierre stated: The goal of the constitutional government is to conserve the Republic; the aim of the revolutionary government is to found it... The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation; it owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death... These notions would be enough to explain the origin and the nature of laws that we call revolutionary ...

If the revolutionary government must be more active in its march and more free in his movements than an ordinary government, is it for that less fair and legitimate? No; it is supported by the most holy of all laws: the Salvation of the People. On 5 February 1794 Robespierre stated, more succinctly that "the Terror is nothing other than prompt, severe, inflexible justice." The result was policy through which the state used violent repression to crush resistance to the government. Under control of the effectively dictatorial Committee, the Convention quickly enacted more legislation. On 9 September the Convention established sans-culottes paramilitary forces, the revolutionary armies, to force farmers to surrender grain demanded by the government. On 17 September the Law of Suspects was passed, which authorized the charging of counter-revolutionaries with vaguely defined crimes against liberty. On 29 September the Convention extended price-fixing from grain and bread to other essential goods, and also fixed wages.

The guillotine became the symbol of a string of executions: Louis XVI had already been guillotined before the start of the terror; Marie-Antoinette, the Girondins, Philippe Égalité, Madame Roland and many others lost their lives under its blade. The Revolutionary Tribunal summarily condemned thousands of people to death by the guillotine, while mobs beat other victims to death. Sometimes people died for their political opinions or actions, but many for little reason beyond mere suspicion, or because some others had a stake in getting rid of them. Among people who were condemned by the revolutionary tribunals, about 18 percent were aristocrats, 6 percent clergy, 4 percent middle class , and 72 percent were workers or peasants accused of hoarding, evading the draft , desertion, rebellion, and other purported minimal crimes. Another anti-clerical uprising was made possible by the installment of the Revolutionary Calendar on 24 October. Hébert's and Chaumette's atheist movement initiated a religious campaign in order to dechristianize society.

The program of dechristianization waged against Catholicism , and eventually against all forms of Christianity , included the deportation of clergy and the condemnation of many of them to death, the closing of churches, the institution of revolutionary and civic cults , the large scale destruction of religious monuments, the outlawing of public and private worship and religious education, the forced abjurement of priests of their vows and forced marriages of the clergy, and the War in the Vendée. The enactment of a law on 21 October 1793 made all suspected priests and all persons who harbored them liable to death on sight. The climax was reached with the celebration of the goddess "Reason" in Notre Dame Cathedral on 10 November. Because dissent was now regarded as counterrevolutionary, extremist enragés such as Hébert and moderate Montagnard indulgents such as Danton were guillotined in the Spring of 1794. On 7 June Robespierre, who favoured deism over Hébert's atheism and had previously condemned the Cult of Reason, advocated a new state religion and recommended that the Convention acknowledge the existence of God.

On the next day, the worship of the deistic Supreme Being was inaugurated as an official aspect of the Revolution. Compared with Hébert's somewhat popular festivals, this austere new religion of Virtue was received with signs of hostility by the Parisian public. The End of the Reign The repression brought thousands of suspects before the Paris Revolutionary Tribunal, whose work was expedited by the Law of 22 Prairial (10 June 1794). As a result of Robespierre's insistence on associating Terror with Virtue, his efforts to make the republic a morally united patriotic community became equated with the endless bloodshed. Finally, after 26 June's decisive military victory over Austria at the Battle of Fleurus, Robespierre was overthrown by a conspiracy of certain members of the Convention on 9 Thermidor (27 July). The fall of Robespierre was brought about by a combination of those who wanted more power for the Committee of Public Safety, and a more radical policy than he was willing to allow, with the moderates who opposed the Revolutionary Government altogether.

They had, between them, made the Law of 22 Prairial one of the charges against him, and after his fall, advocating Terror would mean adopting the policy of a convicted enemy of the Republic, endangering the advocate's own head. Before his execution, Robespierre tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide by shooting himself, but the bullet merely shattered his jaw, and Robespierre was gullotined the next day. The reign of the standing Committee of Public Safety was ended. New members were appointed the day after Robespierre's execution, and term limits were imposed (a quarter of the committee retired every three months); its powers were reduced piece by piece. This was not an entirely or immediately conservative period; no government of the Republic envisaged a Restoration, and Marat was reburied in the Pantheon in September. (Wikipedia) French Revolution - Q-files Encyclopedia Louis XVI, King of France from 1774 to 1791 Causes of the Revolution In the 1780s, discontent about taxation was growing among ordinary French people. Neither the clergy nor noble families in France paid any taxes. The burden of taxation fell on working people and peasants.

In 1788, a bad harvest meant that many people were close to starvation. The country was almost bankrupt as a result of costly wars and the extravagant lifestyle of the monarchy. When the king refused to listen to the demands of the people, they formed the National Assembly. On 26th August 1789 the National Assembly made a Declaration of the Rights of Man, giving the same basic rights to all citizens, including liberty and equality. The guillotine was the main method of execution during the French Revolution. Revolution and execution Unrest grew in the streets of Paris, and on 14th July 1789, a mob attacked the royal prison in Paris, the Bastille. This event marked the beginning of the French Revolution. In 1791, the king, Louis XVI, and his wife, Marie-Antoinette, tried to escape from Paris, but they were arrested. The National Assembly abolished the monarchy in 1792. The king was tried and executed on the guillotine in January 1793. Marie-Antoinette followed him to the guillotine in October of the same year.

Tens of thousands of people suspected of being hostile to the government were beheaded during the “Reign of Terror” of 1793–1794. Many of them were members of the clergy or the nobility, while others were caught between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins. The Girondins and Montagnards The Girondins and Montagnards An artist’s depiction of the Girondins, the dominant faction until mid 1793 France’s revolutionary politicians held different views, based on ideology, attitudes to class, economics, provincial issues and other factors. This diversity was evident in the revolution’s first legislature, the National Constituent Assembly, where most radical deputies sat to the left of the president’s chair, while moderate and conservative deputies sat to the right (a habit that gave rise to the modern terms “left wing” and “right wing”). Similar alignments continued in the Legislative Assembly (October 1791-September 1792). Its replacement body, the National Convention, had two distinct factions called the Girondins and the Montagnards.

While these groups lacked the organisation and discipline of political parties, they were unified enough to vote in blocs and spend months disagreeing over policy. This bickering came to a head in early June 1793 when the Montagnards, under pressure from the republican National Guard and the sans culottes of Paris, expelled Girondin deputies from the Convention. Most Girondins were arrested or forced into exile; few would survive the Reign of Terror. The Girondinist faction took shape in the Legislative Assembly in the second half of 1791. It formed around the figure of Jacques-Pierre Brissot, a republican lawyer and influential speaker in the Jacobin club. Brissot was a popular figure and a number of like-minded deputies gravitated toward him. Their faction became known as the Brissotins or Girondins (so named because many members were from Bordeaux in the Girdone département). The Girondins grew in number within the Assembly and attracted many supporters outside it.

High profile Girondins included economist and businessman Jean-Marie Roland and his salonnière wife Madame Roland, noted politician and philosopher the Marquis de Condorcet, future Paris mayor Jérôme Pétion, radical journalist Nicolas de Bonneville and the powerful orator Pierre Vergniaud. Prominent Girondins shared the benches in the Legislative Assembly and National Convention, then met regularly at Roland’s home to discuss politics and strategy. “In the [National] Constituent Assembly, Girondins and Montagnards were indistinguishable. The Legislative Assembly was a period of gestation. Embryos of the two ‘parties’ formed in late 1791 and early 1792, in debates over peace or war, and were born after painful labor during the seven weeks following August 10th 1792. It was then the Montagnards took control of the Paris Commune and Jacobins. The Montagnards also had the support of the Paris sections (electoral district assemblies) but their reliance on the sections meant they had to cozy up to radical agitators.

Montagnards dominated the delegation elected by Paris to the Convention.” Michael Kennedy, historian At their peak, the Girondins had about 200 deputies in the National Convention. Leadership and policy making was provided by a clique of prominent deputies dubbed the ‘inner sixty’. By late 1792 the Girondins were perceived as intellectual, measured, cautious and faithful to the revolution. Politically, the Girondins were moderate republicans. They initiated a revolutionary war in April 1792, hoping to pre-empt foreign aggression, win public support, militarise the revolution and export it beyond the walls of Paris. Their ideal society was free, capitalist and meritocratic, with personal liberty protected by the rule of law. Most significantly, the Girondins wanted a national government chosen by and representative of all French citizens – not just the people of Paris. They distrusted the radicalism of Paris and believed the sections, the Commune and the sans culottes exerted too much political influence. According to Brissot, these groups were “disorganisers who want everything levelled”. A poster hailing the deputies of the Montagne The Montagnards were not clearly recognisable as a faction until the National Convention.

The terms Montagnards (‘mountain people’) or La Montagne (‘The Mountain’) were first used during sessions of the Legislative Assembly – but they were not in common use until 1793. The Montagnards referred to those who occupied the higher benches in both the Jacobin club and the national legislature. Those who sat on these high benches were generally more radical in their ideology and their policies, while those who sat further down were usually more moderate. Unlike the Girondins, who enjoyed considerable support in the provinces, the Montagnards drew much of their support from Paris. Of the 24 Parisian deputies in the National Convention, 21 sat with the Montagnard faction. The National Convention also contained a third grouping. Known as Le Plaine (‘The Plain’) or Le Marais (‘The Marsh’ or ‘The Swamp’), this mass of deputies occupied the floor space and lower benches of the Convention, sandwiched between the Girondinists and Montagnards. The Plain enjoyed an absolute majority in the Convention, boasting 389 of its 749 deputies in 1792.

Because of this, no legislation or resolution could pass the Convention without the support of deputies from the Plain. Unlike the Montagnards and Girondinists, however, the Plain was filled with shiftless and uncommitted voters; its deputies were not wedded to a particular ideology or outlook. The best way to win the support of the Plain was with convincing oratory. This made speech making a critical skill in the National Convention. The Plain was generally moderate in the first months of the Convention, siding with the Girondins on most issues. As the revolution progressed and radicalised in 1793, many Plain deputies began to vote with the Montagnards. A cartoon hailing Marat’s acquittal of charges levied by the Girondins Conflict between the Girondins and Montagnards came to a head in the spring of 1793. The catalyst for this was the trial of Louis XVI. In January 1793 the National Convention found the king guilty and voted for his execution.

Many Girondin deputies, fearing the king had been judged by Paris rather than the nation as a whole, sought an appel au peuple (‘appeal to the people’) – in effect, a referendum on whether the king should die. This motion was defeated in the Convention, which helped undermine Girondin authority. Among the Montagnards and the Jacobins, the Girondin appel au peuple was denounced as a royalist plot to save the king’s life. In April 1793 the Girondins fought back against Parisian radicalism, orchestrating the arrest of Jean-Paul Marat, a provocative street journalist turned Montagnard deputy. The following month they established the Commission of Twelve, a special committee tasked with investigating members of the Paris Commune and their alleged attempts to undermine the National Convention. After a brief investigation the Commission ordered the arrest of several more radicals, including Jacques Hébert. The free speaking National Guard officer Francois Hanriot Having picked a fight with Parisian radicals, the Girondins now faced even greater opposition.

The Commune, the Paris sections, the Jacobin club and the sans culottes all denounced the Girondins as royalists and federalists (by this stage an anti-revolutionary slur). Calls emerged to remove Girondin deputies from the National Convention. On May 28th a gathering of around 500 Parisian officials received several petitions and speeches, calling for an insurrection until the National Convention was purged of Girondins. Three days later, on the afternoon of May 31st, a number of protesters entered the Convention building and made demands of a similar nature. This drew supportive speeches from Montagnard deputies but little else. On June 2nd around 20,000 Parisians and a contingent of radical National Guardsmen gathered outside the Convention and demanded the expulsion of its Girondinist members. When the Convention president sent a message of protest against this intimidation, National Guard commander François Hanriot replied “Tell your f-cking president that he and his Convention can go f-ck themselves.

If within one hour the 22 [Girondinist deputies] are not delivered, we will blow them all up.” Surrounded and intimidated, the Convention dithered about what to do. Montagnard radicals took the tribune and argued for the expulsion of the Girondin deputies. Leading this chorus was the wheelchair-bound Georges Couthon, who urged the Convention to abide by the will of the people. The National Guard was not holding the assembly to ransom, Couthon argued; they were its friends and wanted the Convention to choose wisely. Jean-Paul Marat called for the Girondins to be arrested and detained. Bertrand Barère asked the Girondin deputies to prevent trouble by voluntarily resigning. The prominent Girondin Maximin Isnard refused to do so, declaring that he represented the people of his département and would resign only on their instruction. Finally, after a stand off and debates lasting several hours, the Convention voted to expel the Girondins. The Girondinist faction had led the revolution since late 1791; now it had been declared an enemy of the revolution. Some of the Girondin deputies were detained under house arrest.

Others fled Paris to the provinces, where they tried to mobilise opposition against the Montagnard-dominated Convention. In late October 1793, Brissot and 21 of his Girondin followers were tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal and guillotined. 1. The Girondins and Montagnards were two political factions that emerged during the Legislative Assembly and later dominated the National Convention. 2. The Girondins began as followers of the Jacobin orator Jacques Brissot. They were moderate republicans who supported revolutionary war and believed the revolution should involve the whole nation, not just Paris. 3. The Montagnards, in contrast, were more influenced by the people of Paris, particularly the sections and the sans culottes. Their leaders included radicals like Robespierre, Marat, Couthon and Barère. 4. The Girondins and Montagnards frequently differed and bickered over policy. By the spring of 1793 this had developed into a factional war, the Girondins initiating action against radical agitators in Paris. 5.

In early June 1793 the Montagnards emerged victorious after the Convention, surrounded by hostile soldiers and sans culottes, was intimidated into expelling its Girondinist deputies. © Alpha History 2015. Content on this page may not be republished or distributed without permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use . This page was written by Jennifer Llewellyn and Steve Thompson. To reference this page, use the following citation: J. Llewellyn and S. Thompson, “The Montagnards and Girondins”, Alpha History, accessed [today’s date],

Question: The conflict between rival political factions the Girondins and the Jacobins, during the French Revolution, was known as The Reign of what?
Answer: Terror